This crazy iMessage app lets you prank friends by putting words in their mouth

Got iOS 10? Want to mess with your friends? A hilarious new iMessage App called Phoneys lets you prank others by sending stickers that look exactly like iMessage text bubbles. And thanks to the new layering feature in the updated version of iMessage, you can place these stickers – which say things like “My political views are totally wrong” or “I have terrible taste in music” – overtop your friend’s message to make it look like they texted these self-deprecating statements to you.

Yep, you can actually put words in your friend’s mouth, then laugh while they try to figure out if they’ve lost their mind, or their phone has been hacked.

Taking advantage of layering is what makes this new app so clever. In iOS 10, iMessage now lets you place stickers on top of incoming text messages, photos, GIFs or even other stickers. The idea is that you could react to a text with a sticker, you could decorate an incoming photo, or even take turns with friends making a sticker collage.

However, not everyone is aware of how stickers work in iOS 10 just yet, which gives you time to enjoy an app like Phoneys.

Here’s how it works. After downloading and installing Phoneys from the iMessage App Store, look for a text message you want to change. Scroll through the available “phoney” texts you want to replace that message with, and drag it on top of the original text.

There are a number of fake texts to pick from, ranging from more generic statements, like “you’re so smart,” or “you’re hilarious,” to those that may be more useful in specific discussions, like “you make this parenting thing look easy,” or “the sports team I pull for sucks,” for example.

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For extra fun, just respond to the “phoney” text to continue the conversation, and watch as your friend reacts in confusion.

Ha!

Phoneys’ creator Adam Howell, who works full-time as a remote employee for San Francisco-based Lithium, likes to develop apps in his free time. When iMessage stickers were announced this June at WWDC, he began working nights and weekends on his first pack, Guises.

Following Guises’ launch, Howell began trying out ideas of what to build next, he says.

“I noticed how you could completely cover up texts with stickers. I started joking with a friend that I could maybe make him say anything I wanted,” explains Howell. “So I made a couple quick stickers locally on my iPhone to test it out, and sure enough it worked.”

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After tweeting out the idea last week, Howell says he received such positive feedback that he decided to get to work.

Now that Phoneys is live, Howell says he plans to release another set of stickers to expand the current collection some time next week, and he’s considering creating an app that will let people write their own “phoney” texts.